


We Collide with Place

by redbrickrose



Series: Purgatory codas [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel and Dean Winchester Need to Use Their Words, Episode: s15e08 Our Father Who Aren't In Heaven, Episode: s15e09 The Trap, Leviathans, M/M, Purgatory, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:34:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22244932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbrickrose/pseuds/redbrickrose
Summary: Nothing is simple, not even in Purgatory.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Purgatory codas [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1601305
Comments: 15
Kudos: 64





	We Collide with Place

**Author's Note:**

> Everybody needs a take on the Purgatory prayer, right? This was written prior to 15x09 airing, and does not take the "Drowning" promo into account - though wow, was there some good stuff in there.
> 
> Takes place after [Through Rugged Land](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22046008), but mostly for my hand-wavy plot stuff. This should stand alone pretty well.

We do not walk through a passive  
landscape. The paint dries eventually. The bodies  
decompose eventually. We collide with place, which  
is another name for God, and limp away with a  
permanent injury.

-Landscape with Fruit Rot and Millipede, Richard Siken

**Hour One.**

They step through the portal, the quick static shock of if giving way to the sharp chill of Purgatory. It's colder than Castiel remembers, but he should have expected that. He’s come to understand angelic grace as a kind of insulation that dulls physical sensation and creates a half-step remove from human emotion. He’d thought he was pretty in touch with his feelings, for an angel and all things considered, but now, with what’s left of his grace flickering like a candle flame, everything from cold to emotion to the passage of time feels dizzyingly personal and immediate in a way he hasn’t felt since his brief brush with humanity.

The physicality of sense memory is such a human thing, but he’s struck all the same by the way that Purgatory smells like rot, and guilt, and sacrifice.

Dean comes to a stop right in front of him, just past the edge of the portal, and Castiel has to step abruptly to the side to avoid colliding with him. His shoulder brushes against Dean’s when he passes and they both stiffen briefly.

“Fucking perfect,” Dean mutters under his breath, staring out at the forest. They’re in a clearing, and not much is visible beyond the dense tree line. Castiel watches him scan their surroundings. Dean shifts, almost unconsciously, to a defensive stance and hefts the weight of the blade in his hand, tense and poised for a fight, already recalibrating for the hypervigilance of Purgatory.

Castiel edges closer to him out of that protective impulse he’s never really able to bury, especially not on a hunt, and especially not _here_ , where his ambient and instinctive awareness of Dean had once kept him moving for an entire year.

“Which way?” Dean asks. Their eyes meet and hold when he turns his head. This is a truce, then, whatever he’s feeling about what Castiel admitted before they left the bunker.

It’s unnatural, cosmically wrong for angels to be in Purgatory. He felt it before and he feels it now, like a film on his skin, the way this place wants to expel them both. Dean had been so sure the portal would work for both of them back then, and of course he’d been right. It had just seemed unnecessarily cruel for Castiel to ever confirm that when it hadn’t mattered, after.

He never had a moment in Purgatory before when he didn’t feel watched, but now everything feels unnervingly quiet and still. He shakes his head. “It shouldn’t matter. They’ll come to us.”

Dean nods and sets off through the trees.

\---

**Hour Two.**

Navigation is difficult in Purgatory. It looks like an Earth forest on the surface, if colder and strangely empty, but there’s a repetitiveness to the landscape upon closer inspection. Like Heaven or Hell, it becomes an undifferentiated maze that makes it difficult to find your way unless you know what you’re looking for. And they don’t, really. Dean is carving X’s into the trees as they pass to mark their path. Castiel is carefully watching for any landmarks, and carefully watching the time.

He was never certain, before, if time passed the same in Purgatory as on Earth. Even with angelic senses, he’d lost so much sense of time in the endless sameness of the days. Dean had complained of the impossibility of telling the time by the angle of the sun with the way the hazy, directionless daylight seemed to fade in and out. The days never shortened or lengthened, and the temperature never changed except for the added chill at night. It hadn’t really mattered then, but it matters now.

Dean steps back from carving another X into a tree. “I wish we had Benny,” he says. Castiel does too, actually. Benny had been difficult, and his camaraderie with Dean had left Castiel on edge with something he hadn’t understood at the time and now recognizes as jealousy, but he’d had an innate sense of direction in this place, born either of time or of actually belonging here.

Dean tries Benny’s loose whistle again, calling out through the trees, and they both wait. The forest gives them nothing back. Dean sighs and slants his eyes toward Castiel.

“Well,” Dean says, “I know how long it can take to find someone in Purgatory.”

\---

**Hour Three.**

They haven’t run into werewolves or vampires or Djinn, and Castiel wonders if Dean’s reputation from the last time he was here lingers.

They haven’t run into any Leviathan either, and that’s worrying.

Dean stops in a clearing, turning to dig a water bottle out of his duffle bag. They’re better prepared than they were last time. They have water, a few extra weapons, Borax, a flashlight. They’d needed more time to plan and strategize, but they hadn’t had it and had figured it didn't really matter. The Leviathan would come for them immediately, like always, and either they’d make it back in time or they wouldn’t. If they didn’t, they would have bigger problems than running out of batteries.

But now there’s nothing, and uncertainty crawls up his spine. Castiel watches Dean’s throat work as he swallows, then turns away to scan the trees.

“I don’t suppose we can just look for a Leviathan cemetery, huh?” Dean asks.

“This is an afterlife, Dean. They don’t die unless someone kills them, and they’re the alpha predator here.”

“Yeah. Great. Lucky them, immortality in this place.” His eyes catch on Castiel's, and then flick away.

Dean had thought he was going to die here once. Castiel had thought he was going to live. It’s true that those things were a very different undertaking.

Since Jack and everything after, Castiel hasn’t known what to do with this deep anger, hasn’t known where to put his grief, visceral and achingly human. That night in the library shattered something between him and Dean and he feels like he’s still picking shrapnel out of his skin. But there were wounds below that. Both of them have scar tissue layered over scar tissue.

“Dean,” he says, and waits until Dean looks at him. “For what it’s worth - that day at the portal. Confronted with a situation like that now, I would make a very different choice.” He doesn’t say “I’m sorry,” because he’s not, exactly. He’d done the best he could at the time, and other than protecting Dean, penance had seemed like the only right option. It had seemed like _part_ of protecting Dean and Sam both, and maybe the rest of the world, given everything his choices had gotten them to that point.

Everything was so deceptively simple here the first time, back when he still thought penance was the same thing as atonement or forgiveness. In hindsight, it was a typically angelic failure to grasp nuance.

Dean opens his mouth like he’s about to say something. Then closes it again and shakes his head. “Yeah, okay,” he says, swallowing hard. He stares at Castiel for a moment, searching, and then turns to continue their trek through the forest. Castiel follows.

\---

**Hour Four.**

Silence except for the crunch of their boots on the leaves and the whistle of wind through the trees. Dean hasn’t spoken since the clearing, and hasn’t paused except to make marks on the trees. Castiel doesn’t try to talk again. They don’t need to look at each other. Castiel knows where Dean is in space by his footfalls, the shift of his weight; he can gauge Dean's mood by the cadence of his breath. It says something about them that the greater the proximity of danger the easier it is for them to fall into sync.

Here is the thing, ultimately: Castiel can deal with the anger, but he’s drowning in the _hurt_. It had taken him a hunt on his own and a week of sitting by a river with a fishing pole trying to meditate to sort out the threads of that.

Dean thinks angels have a limited emotional range, but that’s not exactly true. They feel things strongly - grief, fear, righteous anger. Love. But they do feel them differently - distantly, and on a larger scale. In Heaven, there’s a cause or a mission or a charge. An angel might love humanity in the abstract, or grieve the necessity of a war, or be angry at the demon rampage over Earth or the corruption of Heaven. It’s not supposed to be _personal_.

Castiel has always been a flawed angel in that regard, and over the years, he's come to understand human emotions more directly. That's been an asset in helping him understand humanity (in general), his friends (specifically), and Dean Winchester (in particular).

After being human, even briefly, he’d thought he’d understood thoroughly, but with waning grace, everything is sharper. And beyond his fear for the future and overwhelming, unwavering grief for Jack, there’s a bitterness he can’t shake. The way he’s felt since everything tumbled out of control is how he felt when he _was_ human - helpless and rejected and _angry_ , and not righteously, not at God or circumstance (though that too), but personally, selfishly angry. And the first time he felt like this, it was about Dean too.

It feels petty and small, and huge at the same time too. Angels aren’t supposed to get their _feelings_ hurt. It’s embarrassing, which is another emotion angels aren’t really supposed to feel, and that has only made him angrier.

\---

**Hour Five.**

“This isn’t right,” Castiel says, and Dean turns to look at him, rolling his shoulder back and studying the woods behind him.

“I know. Did you ever go this long with _nothing_?”

“Not like this.” There had been quiet moments in Purgatory, both when he was alone, and later, with Benny and Dean. They’d had uninterrupted hours. But this eerie silence is too complete. It’s weird that he would feel better if he did feel watched. “We need a better plan.”

“Shouldn’t they be able to sense you? Why would they stay away?” Dean pauses for a moment, then looks up, eyes wide and spooked. “Oh, fuck me. The portal. Can they get through the portal?”

“I...don’t know.” Castiel says, with dawning horror. That hadn't even occurred to him; he'd been to used to there being no way out. “It’s angelic in nature, but it’s not part of the design of this place. The monsters, the dead souls, no; they can’t get out. It’s not like an alternate universe. It’s like getting out of Heaven or Hell; they wouldn't be corporeal in the real world, but not all of the Leviathan actually died before they were trapped here. It’s...I don’t know.”

“We’re idiots,” Dean says.

By wordless agreement they turn back the way they came.

They’ve been moving slowly, in expanding circles, so they’re maybe an hour walk back, but they don’t get far.

The vampires come out of nowhere, and they don’t go down easy. When Dean has the last one backed up against a tree, Castiel reaches out to still his hand.

“Where are the Leviathan?” he asks.

She flinches, but smirks up at him, defiant, and hisses out, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Castiel nods at Dean and he brings the knife down.

\---

**Hour Six.**

The way back is a battle, everything they’d been expecting from the beginning and then some. Purgatory throws everything it has at them, except Leviathan, and it feels like a trap, or calculated attacks. Leviathan are the only ones here capable of that level of strategy and interspecies cooperation.

Dean says what they’re both thinking, when Castiel takes down the werewolf standing over him and pulls him to his feet.

“I don’t think they’re actually trying to kill us.”

“No. Slow us down, maybe.”

“Fuck, Cas. What did we walk into?” Castiel doesn’t answer and Dean sighs. “There’s always something bigger and badder waiting for us. Awesome. I love being Purgatory’s most wanted.”

Dean cut a swathe through Purgatory before. Castiel had taken down every Leviathan that came for him, and that was before whatever destruction Naomi and the other angels wrought when they dragged him out. They’re both strategists; they should have known they were walking into an entire world that wanted revenge. That’s the worst part. But Chuck, and the immediacy of the need, it clouds everything.

Night falls like a curtain, shutting out the light. Castiel digs the flashlight out of the front pocket of the duffle, keeping his knife held at ready in his other hand, and they move back toward the portal, shoulder to shoulder.

\---

**Hour Seven**

The portal comes into view, gaping like an open wound and bleeding harsh red light into the darkness. There’s a crowd of shadowy figures gathered around it, and Dean stops Castiel with a hand on his arm, just behind the tree line.

Not that it matters. They know he’s there.

“Hey, you two,” a familiar voice calls out of the darkness. “Fancy meeting you here. Now don’t be shy. Come out or we’ll have to come get you.” Castiel can’t see his face from here, with the way he’s backlit by the portal light, but he knows Dick Roman’s voice too well. Beside him he feels as much as hears Dean’s sharp intake a breath and the way his body goes tense and tight.

Castiel steps out of the trees, summoning as much of his grace as he can. He can't sustain it, but he hopes he can give them enough of a show to be intimidating. The wind picks up, and some of the Leviathan around Dick shuffle back, just a step behind their leader.

Dick laughs. “Two against…” He looks behind him, seeming to count, and then shrugs. “A lot. And some vampires in the trees behind you. I like the odds.”

“You can’t get through the portal,” Castiel says. And Dick, who died on Earth, can’t, even if Castiel isn’t sure about some of the Leviathan who have been here since Purgatory was sealed.

Dick laughs again. “No, none of us can. We burned out a few trying - brave soldiers. But we saw you before with that vampire and hell ghost. We know you’re my ticket out of here. And then, well. I’ll make sure my friends get what they’re owed. And yours do too.”

Castiel hears a sharp grunt from Dean and the scuffle of a fight behind him. He whirls around, rushing back to Dean, Dick’s laugh still ringing.

Dean’s surrounded. Two more vampires step out in front of Castiel, pushing him back, away from the trees. He gets his knife in one of them when he hears Dean call his name.

“Cas! The Leviathan. Go!”

“No!”

Dean looks up at him from the center of the circle. Castiel is not close enough to see his face, but he can hear the desperation and apology in his voice. “The plan changed, Cas. _Go_. I got this.”

Castiel turns around and the Leviathan are on him.

His weakened grace hasn't yet done much to impede his angelic strength, but there are so many. It occurs to him that the last time they were here he still had his wings, and that's probably what saved him then. They push him into the clearing toward the portal’s wavering light. They aren’t even trying to take him down, just drive him back, back, until he’s standing in front of the Leviathan leader who is still wearing Dick Roman’s smirking face. There's a crowd of Leviathan at his back.

“Awww, Castiel,” Dick says. “You know how this is going to go. You’re going to say the spell, and you’re going to let me and a few of my friends in. It’ll be like old times. And then - maybe - we let Dean Winchester live. I’m not so inclined to after the last time we met, but you do me a favor, I do you one. A little quid pro quo.”

“Never.”

“Really? We can drag Dean over here and I’ll get a ride out of here in his arm. We’ll get this done however we need.”

“He’d rather die.”

“We’ll see.”

They’ve got their hands on him, holding him back and pushing him to his knees. Years of mistakes come rushing back. The apocalypse. Heaven. Leviathan the first time. Naomi. Jack.

Not this time. He bows his head and reaches deep, pulling at the root of his dwindling power, and pushing up and out. His grace floods through him, and he hears something like an explosion, feels something in him crack and blow open before everything goes dark.

\---

**Hour Eight**

He wakes up alone in the clearing at the foot of the portal with the grass flattened around him and Leviathan dead on the ground, oozing black into the dirt. He’s got Leviathan blood on him and it smells like oil and rot.

That should get them what they need.

He staggers to his feet, unsteady. Reaching for his grace leaves him dizzy and winded. It’s there, faint and buzzing, but out of reach.

“Dean!” He calls into the darkness. No answer. He stumbles back toward the tree line.

\----

**Hour Nine.**

Dean isn’t dead. He’d know. That's always been simultaneously the most comforting and terrifying element of their bond - the low-key ache of Dean’s longing he can feel through the tendrils of his grace and how he feels it like a gut punch when it’s snuffed out. Dean isn’t the only one who sends out those waves of emotion. He can feel it from Claire sometimes. Sometimes from Sam. But Dean’s the only constant, this humming on the edge of his awareness, vague and wordless most of the time. They’ve never talked about it. He doesn’t know what it means. Before he’d been human, he’d never really wondered, and since then he’s spun in circles over and over for years trying to put words or context to what they are.

There are other things angels aren’t supposed to feel.

He follows it as well he can, but it’s faint, like static stuttering in and out. He tells himself that’s just because his grace is weaker, not because Dean is.

He’s surprised when the words come through clearly.

_Cas, man. So let's try this again. If you can hear me... I saw that light show so I'm choosing to believe you're alive and you can hear me. I got them, but there were a lot of them, and there are probably more where those came from. One of them got me pretty good. There’s a lot of blood, and that’s just going to drag the rest of them out. I don’t know where I am. I haven’t really known where we are since we got here. I can hear water, like a river maybe, and isn’t that just a kick._

_I know you’re gonna try and find me. I’m not gonna tell you not to. I hope you do find me. I’m gonna be so pissed if I die in fucking Purgatory. But if not. If you run out of time, you’ve gotta go back. Don’t pull a me. This is bigger than me. It’s bigger than us. You and Sammy, you’ve got this. Because you have to._

_And listen. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said any of the shit I said. Mom, Jack, none of that was your fault. I know it wrecked you too._

_I’ve just. I’ve been so scared that Chuck has shaped everything. That all the choices we’ve made, our whole...everything has been a lie. I mean, we met because of a mission from Heaven. The idea that you....That we… this can’t be a fucking plot point. I couldn’t take it._

He trails off then, and Castiel thinks it’s over, or he’s passed out, but then Dean’s voice comes again, more softly.

 _Cas, I love you, and I need that one fucking thing to be real in all of this. Not knowing where Chuck ends and our choices start, it made me crazy, and it made me mean. And I still don’t know. If we get out of this, I know there’s more to say, but I just...if I_ don’t _get out of this, I need you to know I don’t blame you, and I believe with everything I am that you and Sam are gonna get this done._

_Okay. Good talk._

Castiel is trembling, dragged under by memories of lonely Purgatory nights and a year of unanswered prayers, when Dean’s voice in his head fades out after that. He presses one hand against a tree to steady himself, and focuses in on the longing pulling at him, clearer now and shining like a beacon.

\----

**Hour Ten**

He finds Dean steps from a river. It's a different one than where Dean found him all those years ago, but still. It makes Castiel wonder and worry, a little, about narrative and symmetry and the foundation of all of Dean’s fears.

Dean is unconscious and breathing, but shallowly. He’s right, the wound in his side is deep, and there’s a lot of blood. It makes Castiel's breath catch in his throat, and it soaks into the knees of his pants when he falls at Dean’s side with a choked out sob of fear.

For the second time tonight, he reaches down deep, pulling from a well he's terrified is empty. His grace fizzles at his fingertips, sputtering before a weak spark finally catches. He watches the skin in Dean’s side knit back together until Dean inhales sharply and opens his eyes.

“Cas,” he gasps, clutching at Castiel's shoulder and trying to push himself into a sitting position before flinching and dropping back onto his back with a groan.

Castiel closes his eyes and concentrates; blue light flickers and fizzles, but there’s nothing left. It’s not enough, really. The worst of the internal damage is healed; Dean's not going to die from blood loss, but it’s a far cry from the complete healing Castiel used to be able to do with just a touch of his hand.

“I’m here,” he murmurs, getting one arm behind Dean to pull him up.

Dean shudders, one hand pushing into his side. “How much time do we have?”

“It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t _leave you_ ,” Castiel says desperately. He knows, with a sudden and settled conviction, that he wouldn’t have, for better or worse, for Heaven or Hell. He’s not proud of that, exactly, because Dean wasn’t wrong that the stakes are world-endingly high, but he’d have stayed and he’d have torn Purgatory apart. They have that in common. Dean taught him to be human. What does he expect?

Dean huffs something that sounds like a laugh that turns into a groan when Castiel accidentally jostles his ribs. Castiel gets one hand on the side of Dean’s jaw to tilt his head up and get a look at his face. His skin is ashen and there’s a mottled bruising along one side of his face; his eyes are bloodshot, but at least they’re focused.

“Nothing is funny,” Castiel says.

Dean leans against him heavily and drops his eyes. He says, “Just your phrasing. I know you wouldn’t leave me here, but you have to admit, you leave a lot.”

Castiel pulls him closer. “I have _never_ wanted to leave you.”

Dean drops his head against Castiel's shoulder and lets himself be tugged to his feet.

\----

**Hour Eleven**

It’s not a long way back, but it’s a difficult one. Dean is conscious and moving, but barely, and Castiel feels about as human and worn down as its possible for an angel to feel and still be an angel.

He half-carries, half-drags Dean back through the trees.

\----

**Hour Twelve**

By the time they get back to the portal, the flowers have bloomed from the Purgatory soil watered with Leviathan blood. Castiel gathers a few. They’re shades of black and eerily delicate. They smell like iron and rot.

On the other side of the portal, Dean trips, falling to his knees and taking Castiel down with him since he's still supporting most of Dean’s weight. When Dean clings tighter to his shoulder, Castiel tips their foreheads together, and they just kneel there in each other’s arms and breathe until the portal snuffs out behind them.

\----

**Aftermath**

Once Dean has managed to stand on his own, he insists he can shower on his own and limps off toward the bathroom. Castiel gathers the rest of the spell ingredients together on the table - that’s for tomorrow, hopefully with Sam and Eileen back and Dean and Castiel both somewhere closer to fighting strength.

Once he hears Dean head back to his room, Castiel goes to shower off the muck of Purgatory. There’s something about the scalding water and the physical act of scrubbing himself clean that’s grounding and feels like the only way to get the scent of blood off of his hands.

He stops by Dean’s room after to check on him. He’s not surprised to find Dean still awake and staring at his laptop. Castiel hovers in the doorway, and Dean looks up, turning to push the computer aside. He flinches with the movement where it pulls at whatever damage still lingers, and Castiel tamps down the guilt over not being enough this time.

“You need to rest. I healed the worst of the internal bleeding and the blood loss, but I know…” he trails off.

Dean shakes his head. “I’m fine.” He moves tentatively when he pushes himself back against the headboard.

“You’re not.”

“I’m alive. So, thank you.”

Castiel nods. “Anything from Sam?”

“No, and he’s not answering. Neither is Eileen.”

That’s...probably not good. But it was a routine case, Dean’s still in pain, and Castiel's grace is tapped out. A defiantly optimistic part of him is hoping that by morning he’ll also be rested enough to finish the job and get Dean fully back on his feet, though a larger part of him isn't sure he's fully coming back from this one. He feels like an emptied out husk.

“Sam and Eileen can take care of themselves, Dean. Just sleep for a few hours. If we don’t hear anything, we’ll track them down tomorrow.”

Dean nods, and then looks up at Castiel, cocking his head to indicate the t-shirt and sweatpants he’s wearing, stolen from the laundry room, and his wet hair. “Since when do you shower. Or change?”

Castiel shrugs. “It takes...energy to maintain my clothes and my vess..my body. Not much. Usually it’s almost instinctive, background. But I exhausted enough of my strength that this was much easier. You don’t mind?” He doesn’t add that he couldn’t have done it with grace if he’d wanted to. There wasn’t even enough left for that tonight.

Dean huffs a laugh, and flinches again, his hand going back to his side. “‘Course not. That shirt’s Sam’s anyway.” He looks up with narrowed eyes. “Are you okay, though? What’s going on with your grace?”

“I don’t know.” He’s been trying not to think about it too much; they'd had bigger problems. Though now he has to admit it's one of the big problems; he knows that his grace fritzing out in the middle of a fight could end up being a significant problem all on its own.

“Does it hurt? You’re not sick again? I’m sorry I didn’t...” Dean breathes out harshly and looks down, tapping his knuckles against the closed laptop. Castiel has things he wants to say about the last few months, and things he still wants Dean to say. He doesn’t know what to do with the Purgatory confession. That's the kind of thing they usually just let slide. He's not sure he can do that this time, but he also doesn’t want Dean’s guilt. Guilt has never really helped either of them.

“No. I’m not in pain. I don’t feel sick or even physically weakened that much beyond...it’s like I reach for my grace and I feel it but I can’t… I feel more…” he trails off again, out of words to explain the way his grace just won’t respond, the control and effort it’s started to take to do things that were once as natural as blinking or breath.

“Feel more what?”

“Human.”

“Right.” Dean sighs, and passes a hand over his face.

“I’ll let you sleep.” Castiel turns to go. He probably should sleep too, actually. He knows where the sheets and the guest rooms are. He doesn’t really want to. He hasn’t really had to since he was sick with the stolen grace, and while he hadn’t minded it as a human, as an angel he doesn’t like it. Angels don’t dream and the loss of consciousness and missing, wasted time leave him disoriented, but with his grace this depleted, he knows his body needs it.

“Cas. Wait.” He turns back around. Dean’s just watching him, like he’s deciding what he’s going to say. “I’m so tired,” he finally says. Castiel waits as instructed. “Just..in every way and of everything, I'm so tired." He pauses, and then breathes out harshly and continues. "I’m too rung out to talk tonight. I won't say anything right. But I know we should. And I’m also too tired to pretend this,” he gestures between them “isn’t what it is.” He’s staring at Castiel a little like a challenge, and Castiel doesn’t totally know what to _do_ with that. Now is probably not the time to admit that from his perspective _this_ has always had the potential to be whatever Dean wanted it to be.

But.

“Good, _I’m_ tired of deathbed confessions,” he says, stepping back into the room. They stare at each other at each other and Castiel blinks first. “I love you,” he adds, helplessly, cutting right to complicated, twisted up core of it. He’s said it before - they’ve both said it now. He’s not sure what Dean will let it mean, or what he himself even needs it to mean. There are intricacies of human emotion that still leave him reeling, but he likes the warmth he sees on Dean’s face.

“I know. And if we make it through all of this we’re gonna figure that out.” Dean says it like a promise, and maybe that is as close as they can get to anything right now, with Dean still on a razor edge of uncertainty about everything in his life. “You should sleep too, right?” When Castiel nods hesitantly, Dean says, “Turn out the light, shut the door, and come here.”

Castiel does, and when he crosses the room Dean slides over to one side of the bed. There’s only the one pillow, but Castiel is surprised when Dean pushes it over to him and tugs on his arm to get him to lie down. When he does, Dean rolls toward him, sliding one arm over his waist to they’re pressed up together, Castiel on his back with Dean’s head on his shoulder.

“Is this okay?”

“Yes. Dean…”

Dean interrupts him with a squeeze at his hip. “No more talking.”

Castiel sighs, but rearranges them to get one arm under Dean, careful of the side he's still favoring, bringing the other down to cover Dean’s fingers. Dean relaxes against him in the darkness, squeezing his hand. Castiel feels some of his own tension evaporate under the soothing rub of Dean’s thumb against his hip.

There’s still so much unsaid between them. There are things he doesn’t know how to say, and there’s pain on both sides he doesn’t know how to heal. There have been times over the last month when Castiel has selfishly hated Chuck more for the wedge driven between himself and Dean than for any of the other horrors, and he knows there’s a tempest on the horizon, coming for them, ready or not. But he’ll take this in the eye of the storm.

Dean’s breath eventually evens out, and Castiel curls even closer, closing his eyes in the darkness, and letting himself sleep.


End file.
